Error with Report Server

We have been recently approached by a client who had a problem with their report server. If you try to access reports from the reports manager, reports run fine and you can view any report fully and in the right format. The problem arrises when a .NET application tries to open these reports, it just opens a new internet explorer window and uses a url to show the report. This was working fine until the client has probably made some changes to their report server. Since then, reports are not displaying in Internet explorer.

To cut a long story short, we eliminated all authentication issues by checking that security and access to all reports is properly configured and the right users has the right to run these reports. We also eliminated problems between SQL Server and the report server, as reports can run smoothly from the reports manager.

We finally came with the concolusion that the error must be related to Internet Explorer not able to render the report properly. We looked through IIS but could not find anything that looks wrong or not the way it should. I have then checked the security setting of Internet explorer (Tool –> Internet Options –> Advanced) and this all seemed fine but I ticked the box that says display all scripting errors. We also did something which I am not sure if it made any difference, which is that we added the server to the trusted sites in Internet Explorer. Then when we tried to open the report again, this time we started to get scripting errors (although they were not showing in the status bar before for some reason). Scripting error dialogs start to show and we finally started to understand what is happening. We got errors such as: “RS Controller is undefined”, “RSControl object reference not set to an object”. We quickly googled this error and we found an easy and simple solution for this (can’t find the original solution at the moment). The solution is to go to the report server itself, open IIS, right click on your reports server (usually under default website), go to directory –>configuration –> search for axd and double click to open its properties. On there uncheck the filter option (can’t remember the option on top of my head and I don’t have access to any IIS 6.0 at the moment to get the exact option wording). Finally click ok.

This has simply solved the problem, and we managed to get all reports back working from the browser and the .NET applicaiton now opens these reports externally with no issues at all.

I have created this post few days after the resolution, and I don’t have access to the client’s servers at the moment so if you have a similar problem and the post doesn’t answer your questions, please feel free to comment here and I promise I will get back to you as soon as I can with more details and may be a screenshot!